Science as a Value of Risk Society

Abstract

In the article, the issue of the relationship between science and the sphere of cultural values is considered in two mutually correlated aspects. First, it reveals the ambivalent status of science as the most important social institution in a modern dynamically transforming society, which, in accordance with the very popular metaphor of U. Beck, is increasingly called the “risk society.” Secondly, the problem of sociocultural determination of scientific knowledge is interpreted as a problem of the axiology of science. At the same time, the relationship between social and intrascientific (cognitive) values is examined through the prism of possible forms and mechanisms of their philosophical and methodological representation. The author examines the specificity of pre-requisite knowledge, especially in the form as the metatheoretical foundations of scientific research is revealed. The article reveals the ambivalent nature of the value status of science in the context of changing socio-cultural priorities of the industrial civilization, against the background of a brief reconstruction of the main ideas of U. Beck’s concept of reflexive modernization, the theory of risk-generating development of science and high technologies by G. Bechmann, Z. Bauman’s idea about sociocultural imbalance as an essential characteristic of “individualized society.” The specificity of the value determination of scientific knowledge is considered in the context of substantiating the sociocognitive approach as the most important result of the philosophical and methodological research in the 20th century. Within the framework of this approach, two alternative strategies are distinguished, for using social and cognitive values as specific forms of prerequisite knowledge. One of the strategies is focused on development of conceptual foundations of science and rationally grounded metatheoretical structures (V.S. Stepin). The second strategy gives preference to non-conceptual (pre-conceptual) forms of background knowledge as productive metaphors that perform the functions of methodological heuristics and the integration of scientific knowledge into culture (M. Foucault, L. Laudan, et al.). The article concludes that there is the peculiar bifunctionality of the cultural valuein relation to science. On the one hand, science itself is a fundamental value in modern culture, although its impact on social life is ambivalent. On the other hand, the dominant values of risk society influence the formation of a new image of science and its methodological tools.